Height and reproductive success in a cohort of british men

Abstract

Two recent studies have shown a relationship between male height and number of offspring in contemporary developed-world populations. One of them argues as a result that directional selection for male tallness is both positive and unconstrained. This paper uses data from a large and socially representative national cohort of men who were born in Britain in March 1958. Taller men were less likely to be childless than shorter ones. They did not have a greater mean number of children. If anything, the pattern was the reverse, since men from higher socioeconomic groups tended to be taller and also to have smaller families. However, clear evidence was found that men who were taller than average were more likely to find a long-term partner, and also more likely to have several different long-term partners. This confirms the finding that tall men are considered more attractive and suggests that, in a noncontracepting environment, they would have more children. There is also evidence of stabilizing selection, since extremely tall men had an excess of health problems and an increased likelihood of childlessness. The conclusion is that male tallness has been selected for in recent human evolution but has been constrained by developmental factors and stabilizing selection on the extremely tall.

Evolution of human mate choice

“…In keeping with the distinction between luxury and necessity, the preference for this type of relationship is more common in middle-class and upper-middle-class Western cultures than in many other cultures (Hewlett, 1992) or in the work-fewer sexual partners than their more symmetric peers (Furlow, Armijo-Prewitt, Gangestad & Simpson, 2000;Manning, Koukourakis, & Brodie, 1997). Confirming that women's stated preferences are often put into practice, Phillips et al (2001) and Nettle (2002) found that physically smaller and less-robust men are less likely to be chosen as marriage partners than are taller and morerobust men.…”

What makes a voice masculine: Physiological and acoustical correlates of women's ratings of men's vocal masculinity

“…Moreover, in most mammals body size has been shown to play a major role in acquiring mates and resources, as larger males are more likely to win fights (Lindenfors et al, 2007), and are more attractive to females (Charlton et al, 2007(Charlton et al, , 2012McElligott et al, 2001). In humans, taller men have been found to be healthier (La Batide-Alanore et al, 2003;Smith et al, 2000), enjoy higher reproductive (Nettle, 2002;Pawlowski et al, 2000), academic (Hensley, 1993) and socioeconomic (Harper, 2000;Judge and Cable, 2004) success, and are more attractive to Western women (Mautz et al, 2013;Stulp et al, 2014;Swami et al, 2008;Yancey and Emerson, 2014) than shorter men, despite possible costs associated with male tallness (i.e. energy allocation trade-off between growth and reproduction: see Pisanski and Feinberg (2013) for a review).…”

Size‐dependent reproductive success in Gambian men: Does height or weight matter more?

“…Height has also been linked to marital and fertility outcomes in men. In Western populations, tall men have more marriages, are less likely to be childless and have more children than shorter men (Mueller and Mazur 2001;Nettle 2002;Pawlowski et al 2000), which ultimately leads to a positive correlation between height and reproductive success.…”